Entry tags:

gender issues

Sexist Imagery In Dragon Magazine
There's been a bunch of chatter going on in the RPG blog scene about sexism, particularly in its intersection with genre. I'm trying to work up a post on that now. As a sidelight, though:

Brand posted with extreme clarity about the depiction of women in gaming art, going into detail about one example image. In the comments there, he mentioned major RPG publication Dragon:

Magazines haven’t been impressing me a lot either — there was a run of sexy woman covers on Dragon mag about 8 months or so ago that was a standing joke among the teenagers at the FLGS. (They weren’t impressed, and they were teenage boys playing Magic.)

And I thought to myself, huh. I have been on-and-off with Dragon and missed that trend, but I don't doubt it - the latest issue even has a dude writing in enthusing about the cheesecake covers and asking for more.

And then I thought, how about I grab some issues and run some numbers? I happened to have the last three issues of Dragon nearby, so grabbed them. And then, since I have the Dragon archive CDs handy, I figured I’d do some five-yearly dipping in and out and get a whole run of numbers.

I divided images into two categories, “women with attitude” and “women as treasure type”, to come up with a percentage of "treasure type" images.

(This was all quick and subjective counting - someone else might get different numbers by evaluating some cases differently. I ignored all the comic strips and cartoons and images that were real small. If the woman showed lots of skin, I classed her as ‘treasure type’ even if she was fighting a dragon. Note that I didn't count total number of images, so I can't measure how prominent depictions of women are now compared to twenty years ago or whatever.)

Here's what I got. Each total is across three consecutive issues:

Advertisements:
2007 - 25%
2002 - 67%
1997 - 50%
1992 - 20%
1987 - 60%
1982 - 50%
1977 - (too few data points)

Advertisements seem to be all over the place. I would wager that the overall percentage of submissive/sexualised depictions of women in ads now is more or less what it was thirty years ago.

Editorial Illustrations:
2007 - 30%
2002 - 00%
1997 - 33%
1992 - 42%
1987 - 40%
1982 - 50%
1977 - (too few data points)

The editorial numbers, however, show a definite downward trend overall. The 2002 thing was a surprise to me - that was when D20 and 3rd Ed D&D were riding high, and Todd Lockwood's spiky new D&D imagery had swept out the Clyde Caldwell/Larry Elmore school of scantily-clad maidens. The actual numbers were, across issues 290-292, 10 depictions of women - of which none got my goat as submissive, sexualised or otherwise worthy of 'treasure type' classification. You don't get that result by accident. There was obviously a clear editorial direction in-house at Wizards which was being followed with some enthusiasm.

The reversion to form more recently is, presumably, a sign that a clear corporate/editorial steer on depictions of women has now gone, and it is left to the judgement of the art director.

Overall depictions of women:
2007 - 28%
2002 - 40%
1997 - 37%
1992 - 34%
1987 - 50%
1982 - 50%
1977 - (too few data points)

This is a positive trend overall. I don't know what proportion should be the target - I don't think it's right or reasonable to aim for zero - but at least there is a sign of change in the way the mainstream of the RPG hobby depicts women.

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So, there's that. This was mostly done to please myself, and it would be a mistake to make any grand claims based on these numbers - but they're something to chew on, at least. And as a sidenote to this sidenote, one of the 1982 issues featured not one but two separate pieces attacking sexism in gaming.